Darkness is my Blanket
by Tony Floyd
Summary: A prequel to "Staining the Sand". The adventures of Auron in his early years – as a cold, emotional, violent loose-cannon with a broken heart and a lonely soul.
1. Torture

**Darkness is my Blanket**

By Tony Floyd

Chapter 1: Torture

She's screaming things like bastard and sonofabitch as he drags the colored man by the hair and his feet twist and bump off rocks and a cloud of tanned air is rising behind them.

"Please Auron! I love him!"

He lets greasy wet hair slip through his fingers and the man hits the ground in a puff of dirt and a symphony of hoarse coughing. Auron spins and faces the teary-eyed blonde and her big brown eyes pierce that thing hidden deep within his chest.

"And what about how much I loved you? I worshipped the fucking ground you walked on and made you my priority. And for the past year, you haven't even been able to show me a lick o' damn kindness."

He turns away without waiting to see her reaction and reaches back down and yanks up a handful of slippery dark hair and the man yelps and some blood runs into his eyes.

"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU! I JUST CAN'T!"

He doesn't turn back again. When he gets back to his horse he drops the man again and takes up some slack from the rope tied around the bastard and makes a firm double knot on the back of the saddle.

"Please, mistuh," the man wheezes. "I dint do nuthin'."

"Say that again when you've got your pants pulled up and maybe I'll be able to take you more seriously."

"I caint pull nothing' up! You gat me tied!"

"Then I suppose I won't be taking you very seriously," and Auron chuckles heartily as he mounts the spotted horse.

He rides for several hours and the man wails for every one of them and soon his face is an unrecognizable, bloody hunk of flesh, and his legs and waist are a mess of equal proportions and a long curving trail of gore stretches out behind them. He slows the horse down when the screaming abruptly stops and dismounts, the spurs on his boots twanging gently as he makes his way to the twisted, stinking, sun-baked and half-dressed mass of crimson. His nose has been sanded away and his genitals are torn off. The bastard lays still and takes shaky breaths, looking up at his torturer with only one eye as the other has been welded shut. Auron draws his six-shooter and the man's eyes go sleepy with relief as Auron puts a hole in his stomach. He doesn't pause or stare or even acknowledge his atrocious masterpiece but simply mounts his horse once more. Before the bastard's eyes flicker and go closed he can see his angel of death lean over his horse and spit in the dirt before the morning sun swallows them whole.

When he stumbles into the saloon his ears aren't ready for the upbeat music jumping from the piano keys. A chorus of drunken voices call out his name and he lifts a hand in the air while his head remains low. He sits at the bar and the bartender leans in close to him over the counter so their eyes are level. Auron knows he's seen him before but he can't think of a name. He smiles a crooked smile from under the brim of his hat and the glass that has been planted next to his left hand slowly fills, the bartender's eyes never moving all the while. He drains the glass and demands a another.

He drains it.

Another.

Drains.

He asks for another and the bartender clasps his shoulder and laughs.

He wakes up in the corner of the saloon with his hat tipped forward and the sun is gone and the saloon is engulfed in darkness. A candle flickers on the counter and the bartender is sweeping under the tables. He reaches into his pocket and draws a fifty-dollar bill.

"You ought to be sober, by now. S'quarter past twelve."

Auron presses the bill into the bartender's hand before departing. He still can't think of a damn name.


	2. Impulse

Chapter 2: Impulse

It finds him how it always does: Alone, the rhythmic clomps jarring him from any attempt to sleep, his heart and head aching with realization, doubt, guilt, pain, and some measure of love rejected and hidden away like some mythical treasure in a sunken ship. He imagines himself before God and the pain is unbearable. He almost laughs.

_Lord, today I tortured and killed an innocent man._

And he knows that if God could see him he would surely be retching.

He stops the horse on the edge of a dusty boarder town he can't remember the name of. He spits.

_Shit. I've got the memory of an asshole twice my age._

He doesn't want a bounty, but he needs money. He knows he should sleep but he isn't tired. He knows he's thinner than he ought to be but he doesn't want to eat. He doesn't want to be drunk. He doesn't want a woman because in his heart there is only one and no other giggling, annoying whore could be a quarter of a third of what she is. What he can never have is all he will ever want.

He rides through town at a gentle trot, his hat drenching his face in shadow. Shady men propped up against pillars and walls are visible only by the glow of their cigarettes and prostitutes call to him from the balconies of the buildings those men lean against. He is stone faced and enshrouded in darkness, riding through town like death itself come to scrounge for souls as black and cold as his own to condemn. He doesn't need to go very far.

A man bursts from a pair of saloon doors with a black-haired prostitute in a red dress and throws her to the ground a few feet ahead of him. He draws a gold-plated pistol and presses it to the head of the wailing whore and something clicks in Auron's head and he's already thumbing back the hammer on his own colt and he shoots the man in the hip, sending him flailing to the ground as a spurt of his blood comes to rest on the young woman's face. His pistol flies farther than he does, glinting in the dim light as it spins wildly. The man screams and the saloon that produced him erupts into shouting and the moaning of pushed tables and the cocking of guns. Four additional men burst from the double doors and only two shots escape the barrels of their weapons before Auron fells all four of them with one shot each. He pulls his horse to a halt and jumps off, stroking the mane comfortingly before planting his last bullet in the head of the man on the far left, who had still been clawing for his gun in the dirt. The streets are filled with bloody rivers and the prostitute cleans the gore from her face with the back of her hand before stepping back to avoid a spreading pool of deep red that holds the moon and stars. Auron pops open the chamber of his weapon and empties the shells, golden canisters splashing in the blood of his five latest victims.


End file.
